Feyerabend, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Ineffability of Reality more

Philosophia DOI 10.1007/s11406-011-9322-9 Feyerabend, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Ineffability of Reality Ian Kidd Received: 6 December 2010 / Accepted: 10 June 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V 2011 . Abstract This paper explores the influence of the fifth-century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Denys) on the twentieth-century philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. I argue that the later Feyerabend took from Denys a metaphysical claim—the ‘doctrine of ineffability’—intended to support epistemic pluralism. The paper has five parts. Part one introduces Denys and Feyerabend’s common epistemological concern to deny the possibility of human knowledge of ultimate reality. Part two examines Denys’ arguments for the ‘ineffability’ of God as presented in On the Divine Names. Part three then explores how Feyerabend imported Denys’ account of divine ineffability into his own metaphysics to provide a novel argument for epistemic pluralism. Part four explains the significance of an appreciation of Dionyius’ influence for our understanding of Feyerabend. I conclude that Denys was a significant and neglected influence upon the later Feyerabend. Keywords Feyerabend . Pseudo-Dionysius . Pluralism . Realism . Ineffability . Humility Introduction For much of Western intellectual history, assessments of the epistemic limits of human beings have been structured by theological concerns. Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, and still for many in the present age, the origin and structure of reality was understood to be inseparable from God and this belief had implications for the scope of human cognitive capacities.1 Faced with a divinely created and providentially structured cosmos, the theological virtue of humility—a sense of appropriateness in the face of the divine—also became an epistemic virtue, 1 For important recent studies, see Dear (2010), Harrison (2007) and Stark (2003). I. Kidd (*) Department of Philosophy, Durham University, Durham, UK e-mail: i.j.kidd@durham.ac.uk Philosophia one which maintained that human beings must avoid pretensions to attain ‘absolute’ knowledge of reality, equal to, or approaching, that of the God which created it. This paper explores this broad theme by examining the influence of the fifth-century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite—more familiarly known to theologians as Denys—upon the twentieth-century philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994), the latter of whom made original use of Denys’ arguments for the ineffability of reality to criticise scientific realism. Feyerabend customarily drew upon an eclectic range of figures in the formation of his own ideas. Because some of these figures—such as Søren Kierkegaard—are not obviously pertinent to the philosophy of science, their influence upon Feyerabend has generally been neglected.2 Denys was one such figure: no-one, to my knowledge, has remarked upon his influence upon Feyerabend, even though he contributed a vital component to Feyerabend’s later philosophy—namely, a doctrine of ineffability. In On the Divine Names, Denys argued that human knowledge of ultimate reality—‘Being’, or God—is both constituted and limited by our perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic commitments. More specifically, each of the ‘divine names’ discloses certain aspects of God but at the cost of obscuring others, such that our knowledge of God is always partial and pluralistic. In his later work, Feyerabend began to import these arguments as a means of criticising the claim that scientific inquiries can provide ‘absolute’ knowledge of objective reality.3 This paper examines Feyerabend’s utilisation of Denys and focuses upon their mutual emphasis upon the ineffability of Being. Pseudo-Denys and the Divine Names Denys is an enigmatic figure in the history of Christian theology. Well-known as a mystic and theologian, his work exerted enormous influence upon medieval European Christian philosophy and was embraced by Aquinas, Bonaventure, Meister Eckart, Teresa of Avila, and St John of the Cross, amongst others.4 One eminent scholar declares that Western mystical theology is ‘unintelligible except against the background’ of Denys’ work (Turner 1995: 13). Denys was the first to use the Greek term mustikos in theology and so can claim to be the inventor of ‘mystical theology’ (Raab and Haagen 2007, p.65n380). Central to Denys’ mystical theology is the conviction that God is ‘above and beyond speech, mind, or being itself ’, ‘gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name’ (588A).5 Such remarks might seem to radically isolate God from human experience, yet this is not Denys’ aim, since this would jeopardise the possibility of meaningful human relationships with God. Instead, such remarks are intended to emphasise that the nature of God cannot be completely or comprehensively captured by concepts See further Kidd (2011a). Feyerabend probably first encountered Pseudo-Dionysius in Panofsky (1946). See Feyerabend (1987, 152). 4 See further Gersh (1978) and Rorem (1993). A classic study of Christian mysticism is Turner (1995), who remarks that ‘[t]here is no field of medieval theological endeavour which Denys leaves untouched’ (216). 5 References are to section numbers in Pseudo-Dionysius (1997). 3 2 Philosophia and language, for the reason that these apply to ‘beings’—discrete, limited entities—and not to pure ‘Being’ itself—abundant, manifold—which Denys identified with God. However since our quotidian experience is only ever of beings—those entities disclosed by our concepts and language—it is through these that we must attempt to engage with God, or pure ‘Being’. Denys therefore sought to ‘explore Being not in its unknown transcendence, but Being as revealed … into the total domain of Being’ (816B).6 Denys established definite epistemological limitations on human knowledge of ultimate reality. Thought and language can only capture ‘beings’—partial and incomplete—and not Being itself, which remains unknown and ineffable, such that Being, or God, forever remains unknowable. The rich constellation of concepts and words available to us dissolves Being into a complex realism of beings and so creates a meaningful and intelligible world. Otherwise, one would be overcome by the ‘manifold abundance’ of Being, for ‘one cannot look upon the face of God and yet live’ (Exodus 33: 20). However, Denys did not suggest that the concepts and words one employs should be drawn at random, since that would introduce an intolerable degree of arbitrariness into our relationship with God; nor does he think that they should be drawn from any available source, since that could risk distorting our understanding of God by permitting it to be shaped by pagan or otherwise heterodox sources. Denys thus warned that ‘we must not dare to resort to words or conceptions concerning that hidden divinity which transcends being’, save those afforded by Scripture (588A).7 The ‘words and conceptions’ of Scriptural provenance are the ‘divine names’ which are the topic of Denys’ On the Divine Names. ‘Divine names’ are provided by God to aid human understanding of Him. Typical examples include ‘father’, ‘wisdom’, ‘fire’, and so on and they are detailed in chapters seven to thirteen of On the Divine Names (857C-977B). Since these ‘names’ are gifted by God they must be indicative of His nature (because a benevolent God would not deceive us) and Denys concluded that each therefore reflects some ‘aspect’ of God. However, many of these ‘names’ (or aspects) are mutually-contradictory—or, at the least, difficult to reconcile with one another—and On the Divine Names seeks to resolve these problems: how can God be ‘father’ and ‘son’, or ‘fire’ and ‘wisdom’? Allowances for poetic language aside, the ‘divine names’ do not offer a coherent vision of God. Denys therefore argued that each ‘name’ expressed an ‘aspect’ of God, but that they were also necessarily partial abstractions. God remains ‘hidden’ behind the ‘divine names’ because they are distorting. By picking out certain aspects of God—‘love’, say, or ‘perfection’—they isolate them from others, dissolving divine unity, so that ‘though the names apply to the godhead as a whole, and so refer to it as a unity, each name is different and so, taken together, they differentiate the godhead’ (Corrigan and Harrington 2004, §3.2).8 See further Janowitz (1991, 365–370). The emphasis upon the scriptural provenance of certain ‘divine names’ is necessary to preserve the authority of Christian scripture. 8 The very idea of ‘divine names’ seems to make a positive epistemic claim—namely, that God’s attributes are plural, enumerable, and unified. Dionysius responded to this problem through complex use of prefixes: each divine name is prefixed ‘hyper-’, signifying divine unity, thus emphasising that the divine names express aspects of God up to a point, but not beyond. 7 6 Philosophia Contemplation of the ‘divine names’ might allow one to approach God, but with the qualification that one can never reach that truth by focusing on any one ‘name’, or set of ‘names’. The reason is that use of the ‘names’ always indicates that one remains within the precincts of concepts and language.9 Denys concluded that human understanding of the divine involves a complex interaction of perceptual, conceptual, and linguistic faculties, on the one hand, and the ineffable Godhead, on the other. Since God can sustain many ‘divine names’ one can conclude that He is manifold and ineffable—even if nothing more can be said of Him. The ‘divine names’ disclose those ‘manifest’ aspects ‘called forth’ by our concepts and words; however, they can only offer partial perspectives. As Denys put it, the divine names help ‘bestow form and shape to the formless and shapeless and multiply and break up the unstructured simplicity by a diversity of divisible symbols’ (1997, p.118). Moreover, different combinations of ‘divine names’ result in different ‘manifestations’ of God, such that the ‘transcendent Divinity is revealed proportionately to one’s capacities’, yielding ‘proportional enlightenments’ (Rorem 1993, p.134). However, God, or Being, remains perpetually unknowable and ineffable. Denys concluded that ‘if all knowledge is of that which is and is [therefore] limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcends being must also transcend knowledge’ (593A). Although one can have knowledge of those ‘aspects’ of ultimate reality—or God, or Being—disclosed by concepts and language, one cannot have knowledge about that ultimate reality itself. Reality is, in the final analysis, ineffable and unknowable because our knowledge of it owes as much to human concepts and language as to that reality itself, and one cannot separate the ‘human contribution’ from that knowledge so as to yield a ‘pure’ knowledge of reality. Feyerabend, Scientific Realism, and Ineffability Denys’ mystical theology has implications for human knowledge of ultimate reality— that is, for our epistemic ambitions. God—‘Being’, ‘ultimate reality’—cannot be fully encompassed by our epistemic capacities, individually or in concert, since each focuses upon certain ‘aspects’ at the expense of others. The very possibility of intelligible epistemic activity precludes our enjoying complete or absolute knowledge of reality in itself. The most one can hope for is ‘proportional enlightenments’. Of course, such epistemological pessimism finds little purchase in the modern world: many contemporary scientific realists are confident that scientific inquiries can provide knowledge of ‘ultimate reality’.10 Contemporary rhetoric about the ‘end of science’ and ‘theories of everything’ seems to suggest that, on the contrary, many scientists, at the least, 9 On the Divine Names treats the conceptual basis of human understanding of the divine, whilst its later, and sadly non-extant, sequel The Symbolic Theology, treated the perceptual basis. As Rorem puts it: ‘The Divine Names then affirmed the more numerous designations for God which come from mental concepts, while The Symbolic Theology ‘descended’ into the still more pluralized realm of sense perception and its plethora of symbols for the deity’ (Rorem, in Pseudo-Dionysius 1987, p.140fn). 10 There are many forms of scientific realism. For a recent survey, see Devitt (2008). Philosophia entertain high hopes for the eventual fulfilment of their considerable epistemic ambitions.11 One critic of the epistemic ambitions of scientific realism was Paul Feyerabend. Although there is an ongoing debate about Feyerabend’s own commitment to scientific realism, with arguments for and against, this debate has neglected one important influence upon Feyerabend, namely, Denys. Feyerabend develops Denys’ mystical theology in his final book, the posthumously-published Conquest of Abundance (2001). This book covers many topics, and was incomplete at the time of Feyerabend’s death, but one of its main claims is that scientific inquiries cannot provide knowledge of reality in itself because they cannot transcend their conceptual, experimental, and theoretical commitments. The sciences offer certain ‘approaches’ to reality which, if successful, may disclose certain of its ‘aspects’, but by no means all of them. Furthermore, reality is ‘responsive’ to a wide range of epistemic activities, including but by no means limited to those of the natural sciences. Feyerabend therefore defends a radical epistemic pluralism, the foundations of which were laid in his earlier studies in the history and philosophy of science in the 1960s and 1970s. What differs into Feyerabend’s later period is, however, the provision of a metaphysics—an account of the fundamental nature of reality—to augment his epistemological arguments for pluralism.12 What Feyerabend took from Denys is not epistemic pluralism per se, but rather a novel set of supporting metaphysical arguments. In Conquest of Abundance, Feyerabend explains that when he began to create his later metaphysics he ‘started from what Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita said about the names of God’ (2001, p.195). Since Denys’ remarks upon the ‘divine names’ is already in place, my aim here is to see how Feyerabend applied them in his critique of scientific realism. Feyerabend accepted that a mind-independent ultimate reality existed but denied that absolute knowledge of it was possible.13 Instead, he argued that many groups— including, but not limited to, scientists—were engaged in a ‘search for reality’ but invariably proceeded by identifying ‘a new domain over and above experience and tradition’ which they honour as ‘Reality’ (2001, pp.11, 9, 58). Feyerabend complained that these ‘manifest realities’ are mistakenly ‘Platonised’, that is, presented as a representation of objective, mind-independent reality (2001, p.170f). However, this is illegitimate, because those ‘manifest realities’ are generated by ‘approaches’—or sets of epistemic activities—with particular conceptual, ontological, and theoretical commitments. As such, they provide ‘evidence of how Being reacts when approached in different ways’, but no more, since ‘Being itself and the conditions of its acting in a certain way remain forever shrouded in darkness’ (2001, p.213). At this point, Feyerabend invokes Denys’ claim that the mutual incompatibility of the ‘realities’ disclosed by the sciences indicated that none of them are describing ‘ultimate reality’: ‘considering that scientists use different and often contradictory methods of research’, each enjoying differing levels of success, ‘we have to conclude that Being responds differently and positively, to many different approaches’ (1993, p.270). This further suggests that Being ‘has no well11 See Horgan (1997) and Carrier et al. (2000). For a clear account of Feyerabend’s pluralism, see Oberheim (2006). 13 See Preston (1997) and, in response, Oberheim (2006, Ch6). 12 Philosophia defined structure but reacts in different ways to different approaches’, of which some ‘lead to nothing and collapse’ (quoted in Ben-Israel 2001, pp.97-8), resulting in a form of quasi-Kantian realism, whereby Being does have some determinate structure, even if it is certainly ‘more yielding than our materialists are willing to concede’ (2001, p.264). These remarks make clear Feyerabend’s debts to Denys. Reality in itself, or ‘Being’, is unknowable, because our knowledge of it arises from its interaction with our ‘approaches’ (concepts, words, and ‘divine names’). It is only when one ‘approaches’ Being with certain concepts and words that ‘aspects’ of it can be disclosed; as Corrigan and Harrington put it, ‘after all speaking, reading, and comprehending of the names ceases, there follows a divine silence, darkness, and unknowing’ (2004, §3.4), a remark mirrored in Feyerabend’s remark that ‘ultimate reality (God, Being) is ineffable. Trying to grasp it directly we face darkness, silence, nothingness’ (2001, p.233). For Feyerabend and Denys, the ‘darkness’ of Being is no impediment to our epistemic engagement with it; on the contrary, this ‘darkness’ is only evident when one attempts to ‘grasp it directly’, without conceptual or linguistic mediation. Fortunately, such ‘darkness’ can easily be dispelled since, for Denys, Scripture provides ‘divine names’, and, for Feyerabend, human cognitive and creative capacities yield ample ‘approaches’ to Being. Moreover, both emphasise the ‘manifold’ or ‘abundant’ nature of Being and use this to undergird their epistemic pluralism.14 Feyerabend clearly concurred with Denys’ pluralistic emphasis upon the receptivity of Being to multiple, mutually-incompatible ‘approaches’ (or epistemic activities). This chimed well with his longstanding commitment to pluralism. What was unique in Denys, however, was a corresponding insistence upon the ineffability of reality, a denial of the possibility of positive knowledge of ‘ultimate reality’. Feyerabend and Denys agree that our epistemic engagement with Being relies upon concepts and words and that, since these pertain to discrete ‘beings’, they distort—or at the least, obscure—the Being from which they are abstracted. Since our knowledge is therefore partial and fragmentary, one maintains the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge: ‘describing a response and not Being itself, all knowledge about the world becomes ambiguous and transparent. It points beyond itself to other types of knowledge and, together with them, to an unknown and forever unknowable Basic Reality’ (2001, p.196). Such epistemic pluralism also indicates the ‘manifold’ and ‘abundant’ character of Being, especially considering its amenability to a multitude of mutually-incompatible ‘approaches’, which ‘show how certain sections of the world respond to [certain] approaches [but] give us no clue about the structure of reality as a whole’ (2001, p.142).15 In an important passage which is worth quoting at length, Feyerabend parallels his own metaphysics with that of Denys in a way that makes his debts apparent: 14 15 Of course, Feyerabend enjoys a more radical epistemic pluralism since, unlike Pseudo-Dionysius, he had no scriptural or doctrinal commitments. As to the question of how ‘responsive’ or ‘malleable’ Being is, Feyerabend replied that ‘there is no way of finding out the limit to which the world permits [epistemic] relativism because Being itself cannot be known’ (quoted in Ben-Israel 2001, pp.97-8). The use of ‘relativism’ here is unfortunate, since ‘pluralism’ would be much wiser. Philosophia ‘According to Pseudo-Dionysius, God or, using the terms of [Conquest of Abundance], Ultimate Reality, or Being) is ineffable. Concentrating our entire strength on Ultimate Reality we face nothingness, a void, no positive response. But we can describe and explain our interaction with certain emanations of God or, to express it in a less theological manner, we have access to the ways in which Ultimate Reality reacts to our approach. Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable’ (2001, p.214) This passage makes it clear that Feyerabend imported Denys’ argument that a doctrine of ineffability should accompany any commitment to epistemic pluralism. Reality ‘reacts’ to a plurality of approaches and to preserve this pluralism—for instance, against the claim that some one set of approaches are primary or privileged—one must maintain a commitment to the claim that reality itself is and remains ineffable. It is also worth noting that Feyerabend’s references to Denys are always made in the context of exegetical remarks upon the genesis of his own ideas (see Feyerabend 2001, pp.195-6, pp.213-4, pp.233f). However, the force of Feyerabend’s epistemic pluralism, especially the emphasis upon the ineffability of Being, is to explicitly criticise the epistemic ambitions of scientific realism. The passage just quoted occurs immediately prior to Feyerabend’s explicit remark that: ‘What we do know are the various forms of manifest reality [generated by our epistemic activities] … Many scientists identify the particular manifest reality they have developed with Ultimate Reality. This is simply a mistake’ (2001, p.214) Feyerabend argues that scientific inquiries cannot provide knowledge of ultimate reality: Being is forever epistemically inaccessible because the very employment of certain epistemic activities introduces conceptual and ontological parameters which owe as much to those activities as to Being. Scientific inquiries disclose only certain ‘aspects’ of Being, whilst obscuring others, and therefore cannot be judged as having unique or special epistemic authority. Feyerabend acknowledged that the sciences, when successful, ‘uncover different sides of the world’—provided that Being ‘reacts appropriately’—however, ‘Being itself cannot be known’ (quoted in Ben-Israel 2001, 97–98). The point that Feyerabend emphasises is that any given epistemic activity can only disclose or provide knowledge of certain aspects of the world. Therefore one must employ a plurality of epistemic activities to maximise our epistemic engagement with the world. Such arguments for pluralism are familiar from Feyerabend’s early work but they were augmented with Denys’ remarks on divine ineffability. To avoid unduly delimiting the range of epistemic activities one employs, one should embrace a doctrine of ineffability: one should adopt the methodological claim that reality cannot be truly or fully known in itself because this claim will preclude our judging one epistemic activity (or set of such activities) from providing uniquely privileged knowledge about the world. A doctrine of ineffability is therefore a means of safeguarding epistemic pluralism by preventing our illegitimately establishing one ‘conception of reality’ with reality itself. This point was noticed by commentators upon Conquest of Abundance. Ian Hacking remarked that Feyerabend ‘disliked … any form of intellectual … hegemony’ because he judged that such ‘single vision’ Philosophia might mislead one into thinking ‘that you see (or even glimpse) the truth, the one and only truth’ (Hacking 2000, p.28). Similarly, Dan Hutto argued that, for the later Feyerabend, ‘our capacity for conceptual innovation and epistemic growth’ depends upon a continuing sense of the ontological complexity of the world and therefore of unrealised ‘possibilities [for new] ways of understanding’. ‘What is important to stress’, adds Hutto, is that ‘such … possibilities for change are always present in our language and practices, since they draw on the abundance that ultimate reality, or Being, avails us’ (Hutto 2002, pp.366, 367). Hacking and Hutto concur that the later Feyerabend thought that epistemic pluralism could be safeguarded by embracing a doctrine of ineffability: a commitment to the inexhaustible abundance and ‘richness’ of reality and its capacity for and receptivity to a diversity of epistemic activities. The later Feyerabend is certainly a metaphysical realist because he affirms that there is an objective world and one can have knowledge of it. The point he presses is that our knowledge of it is necessarily pluralistic because our epistemic activities are partial and fragmentary. As Feyerabend explained, using theological language, ‘God … is ineffable. But depending on our approach God may respond in a variety of comprehensible ways. God is not identical with any one of these ways and it would be a mistake to identify Him (Her, It) with, say, Nature as conceived by modern cosmology’ (2001, 195–196). Reality—or God, or Being—responds to a plurality of epistemic activities, so it would be illegitimate for us to pre-emptively identify any one of these as being privileged and providing true or final knowledge of what reality is like. A doctrine of ineffability precludes such pre-emptions by introducing the methodological rule that no one conception of reality can be identified with reality itself. Therefore the ‘doctrine of ineffability’ shared by Feyerabend and Denys is therefore an optimistic one, since it affirms the ‘receptivity’ of reality to a radical epistemic pluralism. In the next section I argue that Feyerabend’s appeal to Denys was intended to support these remarks on pluralism by demonstrating the value of consulting neglected or otherwise heterodox sources. Feyerabend used Denys not only as a source of novel epistemological insights but also as part of a methodological and rhetorical strategy aimed at exposing and overcoming implicit intellectual prejudices. Methodology and Rhetoric How does an appreciation of Feyerabend’s appeal to Denys change our understanding of his philosophy? There are three main points. The first is that it indicates Feyerabend’s methodological conviction that neglected and heterodox sources— such as Christian mysticism—can be an aid to contemporary philosophical inquiry. Current philosophical debates can be informed and enriched by an appeal to sources which are too often demeaned or disregarded. The second is that Feyerabend used Denys to demonstrate the historicity of contemporary debates, including the persistence of certain problems. Appreciating the historical nature of philosophical debate is essential to philosophical practice since otherwise we labour in ignorance of the presuppositions and developments which inform and enable our inquiries. The third is that Feyerabend appealed to sources like Denys as part of a rhetorical Philosophia strategy aimed at provoking philosophers of science to take seriously sources they would otherwise pass over. These three points are related and I will discuss them in turn. Feyerabend was a methodological pluralist in philosophy as well as in science.16 Throughout his career he was famous, or notorious, for his eclectic and imaginative appeals to sources, disciplines, and traditions beyond the familiar confines of the history and philosophy of science. These included cultural anthropology, development studies, the history of witchcraft, classical scholarship, the history of art and, of course, the writings of figures such as Lenin and Mao. As Paul Hoyningen-Huene remarks, Feyerabend’s work was marked by a deliberate and distinctive strategy of ‘introducing texts from outside the field … that had previously played no role, but which through Feyerabend became fruitful within the philosophy of science’ (Hoyningen-Huene 2000: 8). But this was not merely provocation and wilful, ‘postmodernist’ eclecticism. It was guided by Feyerabend’s sincere conviction that ‘there is no idea, however ancient or absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge’, with the consequence that the ‘whole history of thought’ should be ‘absorbed’ into our inquiries (Feyerabend 1993: 33). Using a medieval Christian mystic such as Denys as a component of an epistemological criticism of scientific realism is one example of this methodological pluralism at work. Most philosophers of science would likely probably see little obvious value, if any, in appeals to medieval mystics. However for Feyerabend, such inability to discern the value of these anomalous sources indicates the faults of those philosophers rather than any demerits of the sources themselves. In a favourite example, Feyerabend notes that the Homeric cosmology, replete with the capricious deities of the Olympian pantheon, ‘sounds rather silly’ to those with modern sensibilities (Feyerabend 2011: p.14f). However he urges us to recognise that those Greeks who did take those beliefs seriously had excellent reasons for doing so, even if it takes imaginative and intellectual effort on our part to appreciate and understand those reasons (see further Feyerabend 2001: Chs1-2). Even if the merits or utility of a particular source are not evident, the proper response, for Feyerabend, is to explore them, as he did with Denys, Dadaism, and other unusual sources. Feyerabend often linked such pluralism to epistemic virtuousness. Those who resist such sources are guilty of epistemic viciousness—or so Feyerabend argues, and he constantly complained that dogmatism and intolerance, in science and philosophy alike, arise from the epistemic vices of scientists and philosophers. In a notable example, Feyerabend criticises Kuhn’s model of science because it praises the ‘dogmatic, authoritarian, and narrow-minded’ character of the normal scientist (Feyerabend 1981: 139). Those characteristics are, of course, ethical and epistemic vices, and elsewhere Feyerabend also criticises other vices, especially arrogance, conceit and intolerance.17 That project was arguably central to Feyerabend’s entire philosophical career, which, as Eric Oberheim persuasively argues, ‘challenged Interestingly, Turner remarks that Dionysius’ work exhibits ‘little sense of a synthesis of method or outlook’ and that his aim was to ‘restore the unity … between speculative theology and … the immediacy of experience’—or, in more contemporary language, between theory and practice, just as Feyerabend aimed to do in science (1995: 126). 17 I will shy off from giving a long list, but for some examples, see Feyerabend (1981: 21, 34, 82n4, 85– 86, 139, 150–151), (1993: 266–267) and (1994). In fact, I propose that Feyerabend is engaged in ‘virtue epistemology’, but space forbids me from developing this further; see further Roberts and Wood (2007). 16 Philosophia many dogmatic presuppositions prevalent in philosophy and the sciences for over half a century’ (2006: vii). The first purpose of Feyerabend’s appeal to Denys is therefore to encourage contemporary philosophers to consult neglected or demeaned sources which can, if approached open-mindedly and undogmatically, be an aid to contemporary philosophical inquiry (see Lloyd 1996). The second point one can take from Feyerabend’s appeal to Denys is that it indicates the historicity of contemporary debates. In this case, the venerable philosophical issue is whether human beings can have complete or absolute knowledge of reality in itself. That debate of course was a topic for Plato, Descartes, Kant and other familiar figures, but Feyerabend emphasises that other theological figures, like Denys, also grappled with it. It is therefore possible, at least in principle, to learn ‘from the sciences [and] also from the humanities … religion and from … ancient traditions’ (1993: 249; see further 1993: Ch4). However, although philosophers of science may consult Kant, few would likely imagine consulting Christian philosophy, even though, as Feyerabend demonstrates, they engaged in highly sophisticated debates about the limits of human knowledge.18 This does not imply that each and every philosopher who has discussed metaphysical realism deserves a place at the table, but that is not Feyerabend’s point. Instead, he urges us to consider that certain legitimate figures in these debates have been prejudicially excluded. Looking to the history of philosophy, and of theology and religion, is one way that we can scrutinise the presuppositions and structures of our contemporary debates. Feyerabend urges us to become scholars ‘capable of looking beyond the limits of a particular school’ and to become epistemically humble (2001: 195). Even if figures like Denys do not, after examination, promise to contribute anything to current debates, one can at least be sure that the methods and approaches currently being used were selected with care, rather than adopted by convention. Indeed, Feyerabend himself explained that he had ‘started from’ Denys’ remarks on the names of God, implying that he had found them fruitful enough to persist with them. The third point to take from Feyerabend’s use of Denys is its rhetorical nature. I argued that there is a coherent methodological principle at work in the appeal to such unusual sources. Such sources may enrich our current debates, aid in the cultivation of epistemic virtues, and help us to appreciate the historicity of our current debates. However, Feyerabend was quite aware that methodological arguments alone were not enough to challenge the sort of dogmatism and prejudice which militates against (for instance) medieval Christian philosophy. It is often supposed, doubtless as a legacy of the Enlightenment’s anti-religious agenda, that theology, whether Christian or otherwise, has little worthwhile to say about philosophical questions. Even if such sentiments are not overtly secular or scientistic, they constitute a barrier to the consultation of figures like Denys who many philosophers—if they are aware of them at all—may prefer to see consigned to Departments of Theology or to courses on the History of Medieval Philosophy. Feyerabend confronted such prejudices using dramatic and provocative examples. The obvious example is the original subtitle of Against Method, ‘Outline of an 18 On the relationship between theological and epistemic humility in science, see Kidd (2011b: 188–189). Philosophia anarchistic theory of knowledge’. The term ‘anarchistic’ was later replaced with ‘Dadaistic’, an amendment which amplified, rather than assuaged its radical character. Feyerabend also peppered that book with references to unorthodox figures; for instance, the first persons quoted include Lenin and Bertolt Brecht. Such rhetorical gestures were intended to provoke readers to identify and assess their implicit prejudices, or at least to indicate that sources which they regard as non grata may, in fact, be of value. Feyerabend uses rhetoric to fulfil a central philosophical function, namely to expose prejudices and, if necessary, to overcome them (see further Oberheim 2006: 31–38). The appeal to Denys is one instance of Feyerabend’s rhetorical use of deliberately using ostensibly outrageous sources to challenge readers’ preconceptions about the legitimate sources and methods of philosophical inquiry. In the course of such provocations, those readers may find their prejudices challenged and perhaps dissolved and may, perhaps, come to appreciate novel sources of insight and understanding which would otherwise have been occluded by their epistemic vices. This does not imply that every heterodox source will be useful, but Feyerabend does not promise that. Instead, what Feyerabend wants is to demonstrate that at present our capacity to assess and employ the rich resources afforded by the history of human thought is impaired by our prejudices. By offering case studies, like that of Denys, which indicate the value of such reassessments, Feyerabend is trying to enrich inquiry rather than undermine or impugn it.19 Conclusions I conclude that Denys’ mystical theology was a significant influence upon Feyerabend’s later metaphysics. Both defend epistemic pluralism, and certainly Feyerabend’s own commitment to pluralism predates his awareness of Denys. What Denys contributed to Feyerabend’s later thought, however, is the idea that arguments for pluralism should be accompanied by commitment to a ‘doctrine of ineffability’. Reality should be construed as ‘ineffable’, insofar as it is understood to be amenable to representation by multiple concepts or theories; however, none of these do or can provide a true or absolute account of that reality. The themes of the partial character of human knowledge of ultimate reality and the consequent ineffability of Being run throughout the work of both. Moreover, it is clear that Feyerabend imported Denys’ conviction that it is erroneous to mistakenly identify Being with any one of its manifestations (whether with certain ‘divine names’ or with particular ‘manifest realities’), and that this informed Feyerabend’s criticisms of scientific realism. Feyerabend and Denys are also united in their insistence that Being is manifold and abundant and that it can sustain a remarkable diversity of ‘names’ and ‘manifest realities’ and that this is a cause for wonder and praise. It is also worth adding that Feyerabend acknowledged that his later metaphysics ‘sounds quite mystical’ and that he was not at all hostile to this fact (quoted in Ben-Israel 19 For a fuller account of the conception of philosophical inquiry at work here, see Kidd (2012). Philosophia 2001, pp.97-8).20 Intimations of mysticism aside, it is clear that Feyerabend shares with Denys the positive claim that Being is abundant and manifold; however, the most visible theme of his later work is the negative project of criticising any form of ‘unitarian realism claiming to possess positive knowledge about Ultimate Reality’ (2001, p.215), of which contemporary forms of scientific realism were the most potent examples. On the positive side, Feyerabend’s appeal to Denys affords us new opportunities to enrich the intellectual resources available to us, by challenging us to consult sources—like medieval Christian mysticism—which are otherwise derided or passed over. This positive project of challenging prejudices and pluralising philosophical inquiry is in harmony with both Feyerabend and Denys’ insistence upon epistemic pluralism and the need for the virtue of humility. Since reality is, if anything, a complex and worthy object of inquiry it makes good epistemic sense to employ the most diverse set of investigative tools at our disposal. Therefore, whether the doctrine of ineffability is tenable or not, by taking seriously figures like Denys and their advocates, like Feyerabend, our inquiry may be enriched.21 At both the epistemological and the ethical level, the lesson that Feyerabend takes from Denys is the value of, and need for pluralism and humility. Acknowledgements I offer my thanks to E.J. Lowe, Claire Graham and to the journal referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. References Ben-Israel, I. (2001). Philosophy and methodology of military intelligence: correspondence with Paul Feyerabend. Philosophia, 28, 71–100. 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